Day of the Dead Quilt

 I've been so good about working on finishing projects, that I decided to reward myself by starting something new.  It's going to be in the style of Dia de Muertos.  It is for my friend Boomer who survived a "widow maker" heart attack, collapsing as he walked into the Emergency Department. The full sized skeleton will be wearing the shirt they cut off him at the ED.

The quilt will be full of symbolism related to his life and hobbies.  The gear eyes are for his lifetime as a mechanic.  The white mouth surround and red nose are for his years as a professional clown.  The winged warrior is the symbol of his motorcycle club.  The teeth and warrior details are shown here on a plastic overlay and will be quilted in. 

My friend's roomate Frank posed for this picture so I could figure out how to add a hat tip (a feature of his professional clown portrait. 

I hope to make some progress on the spine & rib designs today.  My first draft was out of proportion since I tried to do it mathematically from an image and still match the size of the shirt.

Loud!

 Another finish!  This quilt was started Feb 2019 when I was testing a foundation piecing pattern for a friend who wanted to learn to quilt when she retired. It is called Nell's Star /Charleston Star  available at this link.    I am not certain where the purple/orange batik came from.  Nor do I understand what compelled me to buy it.  I suspect that I bought it on clearance. I decided to pair it with green to round out the color wheel.  That is one LOUD color scheme.

 This much color is not everyone's cup of tea.  But then I thought of my friend Lori.  She's a colorful character.  And she is constantly crocheting things for my granddaughter.  She never forgets my birthday.  She was long overdue for a gift from me.

 I had purchased Aunt Millie's Garden from Piece O'Cake Designs because I liked their funky flowers. (Click on the link above if you want to know what it's supposed to look like) I decided to rework them into a border.  Unfortunately, there was a delay of a year from when I started the project to when I picked it up again and I'd forgotten some of my plans.  Subsequently there's more design changes where 2 corners include the star/dot flower and 2 do not.  I kept wanting to add more leaves, but settled for quilting some in.

This was free motion quilted on my Singer Patchwork with a mix of Gutterman and Connecting Threads thread.  Batting is Pellon Nature's Touch 90% cotton batting.  Backing is unbleached muslin.

Slow Progress

The morning after my last post, I made a frustrating discovery.  I had been having trouble with alignment on the replacement panels that are marked with 1" instead of 1.5" grid.  The reason turned out to be that I was 1/2" off when cutting the panel.  So 80% of the pieces in the panels I had spent 2 days applying, had to be re-positioned and re-fused.

That is represented on the photo as the big blank spot of sky to the left of the lady. 

I was burnt out on that project, as you might imagine.   I went back to working on "Loud".  It's a quilt I'm making for a friend that has a rather complex floral outer border.  She wants a surprise reveal, so all you get is a sneak peak.  It's back basting needle turn except for the bias stems.  I estimated that there were around 450 pieces to stitch, and I'm down to basting and sewing the last 16 leaves and 16 dots.  I know that I'll be tempted to add more at that point, but will focus on talking myself into adding more details in the quilting.

Monet Progress

 Three full time days back into this project and progress is being made.  Last post showed the sorting of the panels that were fused a decade ago before I gave up on this project.  The lower left section of the boy and lower skirt has now been completed. WHOO HOOO!!!

I've spent the better part of the past 2 days on the placement of 897 squares.  The green umbrella was slow going as I didn't have a "palate" of colors and cut as needed to be sure I didn't waste fabric.  I also managed to lose a piece of fabric and spent  over an hour finding a replacement.  Later finding the missing fabric tucked in another fabric.  Bah.  Today discovered that I didn't have anywhere near the amount of very pale yellow that is part of the sky clouds.  Did find a replacement batik that's actually better as it blends blue and yellow.

There are still 26 rows down to the boy panel.  (23 wide)
And a 15 wide panel down most of the left side.  SIGH. 

What's that phrase again...Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should.